


The Grave Answered

by LananiA3O



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, AU, Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Good Batdad™ Bruce, Happy Ending, More angst, Resurrection, graphic description of minor to medium injuries, graveyard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 21:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12155388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Exactly six months after Jason's death, Bruce returns to the cemetery to talk to his son. He is almost used to it by now. He talks. The grave never answers. But tonight is different...





	The Grave Answered

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I see you everywhere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12071085) by [Cerusee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee). 



> So, this is my sort of spiritual sequel to Cerusee's amazing "I see you everywhere". Same continuity. Same character constellations. Her story is a wonderful 400-words drabble, so if you haven't read it yet, go read it now, then come back for this.
> 
> AU in which Bruce is actually at Jason's grave the night Jason digs himself out of his own coffin.
> 
> For status updates, writing trivia, fandom/fanfiction/writing related questions and occasional random ramblings, please visit my tumblr: http://lananiscorner.tumblr.com/

He saw him everywhere. In every place. On every day. Why should today have been any different?

Bruce swallowed hard as he got out of the Aston Martin, one hand clutching a large, steel-ribbed umbrella, the other clutching a bouquet of flowers. The bouquet weighed half as much as the umbrella on a scale and ten times as much in his hand.

White stargazer lilies for innocence, sympathy and purity. Bright red gladioli for strength, sincerity and moral integrity. A crimson rose for deepest grief and sorrow.

 _It is also a symbol of unconditional love and rebirth_ , the lady at the flower shop – _Anna_ , Bruce’s analytical mind recalled her name tag not at all helpfully – had told him in what Bruce believed to be an effort to console him, to ease his pain.

It had eased absolutely nothing.

He saw Jason holding the door as Alfred got back in the car, giving a perfect bow, just like Alfred had taught him, a proud grin on his face.

He saw Jason skipping alongside him, so full of unbridled energy as he took three steps at a time, egging Bruce on and calling him a slowpoke. Bruce had half a mind to scream at him. Slow down, Jason! Don’t jump on the stairs, Jason! They are slippery in the rain, Jason! Show some respect in this place, Jason! Don’t run Jason!

_Don’t leave me, Jason!_

He almost screamed, but he didn’t, because even though it really was raining cats and dogs and even though he really was in a graveyard and even though the steps really were old and slim and steep and slippery, there was no reason to scream. Because Jason wasn’t there. Not really, at least. It was a trick that his mind played on him. His damn, restless, sleep-deprived mind that saw it fit to conjure up images of Jason – laughing, grinning, running, jumping, _living_ Jason – at every opportunity, as if to dangle his loss right in front of his face like a steak in front of a starving dog.

Even worse, his mind was damn good at it.

The image was perfect, down to a T. The color of Jason’s eyes – that faded teal blue with a tinge of green – the unruly coal black hair that just refused to stay in place, the bright laughter that echoed off the stones all around him in spite of the hammering rain, the slight skip in the way he walked, the frown he gave when Bruce was lagging behind, the bouquet growing heavier and heavier in his hand.

“You’re not really here,” Bruce finally muttered, halfway up the stairs that led to the other side of the cemetery hill. He would not shout, even thought the rain would probably swallow his words and the graveyard was practically empty, this being late October, but not quite Halloween, but he could mutter to himself to dispel the phantom at least.

The phantom was having none of it.

 _“Of course I’m not here, you big boob,”_ Jason scowled at him from atop the stairs. _“I’m on the other side of the hill, remember?”_

Bruce remembered. He had been remembering it for precisely six months now and each day had been another nail in the coffin of his heart. Each morning he had woken up, thinking, hoping that it had just been a bad dream. Each morning he had gone to Jason’s bedroom only to find it cold and empty, the textbooks and literature untouched, the bed perfectly made. Each morning he had turned around to find Alfred waiting for him, shaking his head with a look on his face that spoke of layers upon layers upon layers of good manners covering up a broken heart.

Because Jason was not there. He was not here either. Jason was on the other side of Grace Hill, the soft incline that divided Gotham’s largest cemetery into two halves, in a cashmere suit – Jason had always hated dinner suits – in a mahogany box lined with Egyptian silk, six feet below the ground, right next to his mother, Catherine Todd.

Bruce could see the site from the top of the hill now, and the sight made his heart contract like a vice. He swallowed hard as he followed the boy in the red hoodie as he skipped down the hill on the other side. As much as Bruce wanted to run after him, toss down the flowers, speak a quick prayer, and flee while he was still coherent and stable enough to do so, he couldn’t. All he could do was to drag his feet, one after the other, left right left right left, towards the angel watching, praying, over the grave of his son.

_The grave of his son._

Those were words no man should ever have to speak, or even think for that matter, and Bruce felt the renewed stab of guilt and sorrow in his heart as he approached the statue and the dreadful inscription beneath it and the even more dreadful patch of earth in front of it, dark and dank dirt pelted by relentless rain. Jason stood next to the angel, inspecting his own grave with a look that teetered between puzzled and displeased. Bruce didn’t blame him. He still could not quite believe it himself.

A bolt of thunder struck across the sky and for a moment Bruce was numb. When he looked around again, Jason was gone and it was just Bruce and the angel and the harsh rain and the thunder rolling in the distance.

“I’m sorry, Jason.”

The words rolled off his tongue slowly, every fiber in his body fighting once more against the firm grip of reality. Apparently, even now, half a year later, there was still a foolish part inside of him that believed none of this would be real if only he wished hard enough. He put the flowers down carefully, tucked away at the statue’s feet where they would be at least somewhat protected from the rain and wind. Then, he took a few steps back again, back to where the foot of the casket rested six feet under.

“I wanted to give you hope, Jason,” Bruce finally continued, and the words felt like thick blobs of cold glue in his throat. “I wanted you to go to Princeton. I wanted to see how you would remake yourself after Robin, the way Dick did. I wanted you to have a life, a future.”

The grave didn’t answer. Of course not. It never did. Jason was silent, too, sitting by the angel and flicking a finger at the largest of the gladioli spikes, watching it bob back and forth with a look that screamed disinterested and made guilt curl heavily inside Bruce’s stomach. The message was loud and clear: what he had wanted for Jason didn’t matter. What mattered was what he had actually gotten him.

A painful death by the hands of a deranged murderer at the tender age of fifteen. Doom instead of hope. A cold grave instead of higher learning. A broken body in a wooden box instead of a grown man in his own colors. Death instead of life. Nothingness instead of a future.

“I’m so sorry, Jason...”

His knees gave out just before his eyes did, and his pants were soaked in cold, wet mud from ankle to knee just before his tears added to the rain. He no longer felt the cold on his skin, only the icy chill emanating from a hole inside him that would not fill, no matter how many days passed. It was cold and it hurt. Dear God, it hurt!

_It should be me instead of you, Jason. It should have been me. I’m so sorry. So sorry. I’m—_

Thunder struck hard across the sky once more, bathing the darkness of the graveyard in the glaring light of a flash for just a second. It made the dirt atop Jason’s grave seem to dance even harder under the pelting whip of the rain, almost as if the ground had a mind of its own and Bruce shook his head hard to clear his mind. His fingers curled into fists around the hem of his coat as he counted the seconds, forcing his breath to return to more acceptable, normal ranges. _I am hyperventilating_ , the analytical part of his brain realized ridiculously late. _Too many breaths, too much expelled carbon-dioxide_.

Another lightning bolt raced across the midnight sky and this time Bruce closed his eyes at the glaring light. The rain kept on coming, assaulting stone and soil and man alike and soaking through every fiber of his clothes. Any minute now, Alfred was going to come up the hill and chide him for going out in weather like this without an umbrella.

_The umbrella..._

Bruce’s mind did a double-take. He had brought an umbrella. Steel-boned, black-webbed. He must have put it down before he had arranged the bouquet. With a deep breath, Bruce steeled himself to look across the dreaded six-by-three feet patch of earth between himself and the ghost of his son once more.

One breath could not have been enough. Bruce froze as his mind processed the picture in front him.

The rain was still dancing on the earth, moving around little splashes of mud, but it was not the rain that did the heavy lifting. The greatest shift came not from above, but from _below_. Bruce watched in silent disbelief and horror as the soil two feet from the statue was cleaved in two and pushed aside clumsily. The downpour forced half of it back in again, trying to drown and swallow whatever was trying to break free from the earth, but the pushing continued.

Then, a hand emerged from the hole.

At first, Bruce thought his oxygen-deprived, grief-ridden brain was playing tricks on him, mistaking worms for fingers, but the closer he looked, the harder it became to rationalize away the sight of pale skin covered in crumbs of dirt and thick streams of blood as nothing but earthworms, brought to life by his traumatized psyche. Especially since there were two worms right there, crawling in between the long, slender fingers. Some of the nails were broken. One of them had come off completely, leaving a bloody spot of raw flesh in its place. On the other side of the hand, wet white silk and dark blue cashmere clung to a spidery wrist and a thin arm.

A second hand emerged next to the first and Bruce finally managed to let go of the breath he had been holding and suck in fresh air. It hit him with the force of an eighteen-wheeler and turned his lungs into cold stones. This could not be happening. This was physically impossible. This wasn’t real. He knew that like he knew his own name, but the knowledge brought him no comfort, only more dread. Bruce scanned his surroundings to evaluate this strategy and grabbed the next best weapon he could get his hand on.

It was the goddamn umbrella, lying folded and forgotten by his side.

“—uce...”

The creature murmured through a mouthful of wet dirt as its head pushed through the surface and into the rain. In the glaring light of the bolt splicing the clouds, the deep black hair shimmered almost hauntingly blue. The face was caked in blood and mud, the lips were almost purple, with barely a hint of the healthy rose color a living thing would have shining underneath. From the middle of the two black and blue eyes, two tired orbs of teal twitched, scouring their surroundings without purpose or focus.

Bruce was just about ready to attack, when the creature spotted him, crouched just out of reach, ready to pounce. Something akin to happiness and relief glimmered in its eyes as it homed in on his face.

“Bruce?”

“Jason?”

Bruce shook his head. This couldn’t be. Jason was dead. _Dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD. D. E. A. D. Deceased. Departed_. Dead boys did not just crawl out of their own graves. It’s not like he had never dreamed of it but—

Yes, that was it. He was dreaming. Hallucinating. He swallowed he hope that was foolishly starting to crawl out of the hole in his heart, stood up, straightened his spine, and put on the scowl he reserved for every supernatural fiend that crossed his way.

“You are not real. This is not real.”

The creature – now half-emerged from the grave, and dear God that looked just like the suit he had buried Jason in – stared at him in utter confusion. Bruce took another deep breath, knowing that he would likely wake up at the end of another meeting he had dozed off in because of too many hours spend patrolling and/or grieving, and this time the air didn’t hurt quite so much in his lungs. There was comfort in knowing that this cruel charade his brain had put on would be over soon, even if he was going to wake up to the harsh reality of having lost his son. Again. He braced himself for the attack that this demon of his mind was surely about to launch on him any second now. He braced himself for rabid snarling and growling and flailing and scratching and biting.

“This is _not_ real.”

The creature cried.

Bruce felt his muscles freeze. This was not the cry of an animal or some supernatural atrocity from another dimension or some failed scientific or magical experiment. It was the growing sobbing, the choked weeping of a human being. A very young human being.

The boy cried.

“Dad...”

“Jason?”

The boy lifted his head, once more torn between confusion and that glimmer of hope. Somehow, the tears didn’t obscure his eyes; they only made them shine more brightly. Bruce saw them clearly now. Teal blue, with a tinge of green, tiny spikes of seaweed green really, right around the pupil. He knew those eyes. He knew them like the back of his hand.

“Jason!”

He dropped the umbrella in the mud. This time, when he went to his knees, it wasn’t out of weakness. It was deliberate. He wrapped his arms around the frail body sticking out of the wet ground and hugged him tightly, relishing the spark of warmth piercing through the cold, the faint huff of air against his chest as the boy – Jason! – exhaled, and the feeling of two hands clutching weakly at Bruce’s coat.

If this was a dream, Bruce did not want to wake up.

“Bruce...” Jason mumbled into his chest. His voice sounded tired and old and filled with dirt. “Cold. So cold.”

Bruce’s eyes followed the shiver as it ran down Jason’s spine and he wanted to smack himself in the face. His heart nearly broke at the small whine that left his son’s mouth as he broke the hug, but it had to be done. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around Jason instead, then started digging.

The ground around Jason’s torso was loose enough and wet from the rain, but the deeper he dug, the harder the soil got. Halfway down Jason’s leg, he rammed his fingers straight into a splinter of the mahogany coffin and Bruce shuddered at the thought of Jason having had to dig his way out of all three inches of that five-thousand-dollar monstrosity with his own bare hands. He stopped when Jason’s leg twitched upward as a result of the boy’s exhausted pulling and pushed the last heap of dirt he had grabbed to the side. Despite being all but dead weight, Jason was light as a feather in his arms as Bruce reached under his armpits and pulled him from the makeshift hole atop the coffin. The pants of his cashmere suit were smudged with muddy stains and riddled with cuts and splinters, but at least there wasn’t much blood. Not that Bruce could see.

“There, there...”

He slumped back against the base of the monument above Jason’s grave, against the damned inscription that read “HERE LIES JASON TODD”, and relished the feeling of relief that washed over him as Jason cuddled closer against him, hands clutching Bruce’s shirt and his head tucked just beneath Bruce’s chin. His breaths were small and shallow, but they were breaths. Jason was breathing. Jason was alive. There was no greater miracle, no greater joy than that.

Above them, the angel watched on quietly, wings spread wide to shelter them from the rain. Bruce looked past the hooded head, up into the heavens, and spoke a silent prayer to whatever higher power had thought it fit to return his son to him.

“Bruce...” Jason’s eyes had followed his, Bruce noticed, but they had stopped at the angel. Now, he was looking around, taking in the full, dreary scenery, and a fresh tremor rolled through his body. “Why was I in a coffin?”

Bruce swallowed hard. The Bat inside him told him to deflect the question. The father inside him wanted to offer a convenient, safe, comfortable lie.

In the end, he found the energy for neither.

“Because you died, Jason.” For once, he didn’t make an effort to hide the tears from his voice. He wasn’t sure he could have done so, even if he had tried. It was no longer rain streaming down his face and nesting in Jason’s coal black bangs. “You went to Ethiopia to find your mother, remember?” Jason nodded slightly. “You ran into Joker. He... he...”

“I’m sorry, Bruce.” Jason curled even closer into his hug, if that was even humanly possible, and the sight broke Bruce’s heart again. He had lost count by now. “I should have told you where I was the moment he got involved. I should have—“

“Hush, Jason.” Bruce kissed his forehead and ruffled a hand through his hair. Perhaps a graveyard was not the right place for this conversation, but he didn’t want to let go of this moment. He didn’t want to let go of his son. “It was not your fault. It _is not_ your fault. I don’t blame you.”

That seemed to uncoil some of Jason’s tension at least a little and Bruce was grateful for the small blessing on top of the miraculous gift he had already received. Jason nodded.

“How long?”

“Six months.”

Six agonizing, horrible long months, but they were over now. Bruce took comfort in that.

“Does that mean I missed Halloween?”

Bruce laughed. He couldn’t help it. He knew he shouldn’t, not when his own son, who had just dug himself out of _his own grave_ , sounded absolutely indignantly heartbroken, but – dear mother of God – leave it to Jason to instantly put every dire situation into his own, morbid and yet childlike perspective.

“You didn’t, chum.” With that, Bruce finally found the strength to get up again. Jason weighed practically nothing in his arms, as he slung one arm under his knees and pushed off the ground. There was still the question of how he was going to explain all of this to Alfred. And Dick. And Barbara. And Jason’s teachers and the media and—

 _Another time,_ something in his mind mercifully admonished. _There is a time and a place for everything under the sun. Right now, you need to take your son home._

He had just turned to head back to the car, when Jason raised his head once more. His voice was heavy with sleep, but there was a familiar spark of cheekiness to it.

“Picked nice flowers, though.”

Bruce turned once more and looked back at the grave. At the angel’s feet, the blossoms of the bouquet bobbed quietly in the wind.

Bruce smiled at his son. “Do you know what they stand for?”

“White lilies stand for innocence,” Jason muttered, his eyelids half closed already. “Red gladioli for strength and integrity.”

Bruce nodded.

“And a crimson rose. For grief. For unconditional love. And for rebirth.”


End file.
